Germanium surfaces, and more particularly Ge (100) surfaces, have received little attention over the past few decades due to the great success of silicon (Si) based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. There now exists a surging interest in Ge based field-effect transistors (FET) where Si cleaning techniques do not apply. This makes the preparing of Ge and/or Ge-containing surfaces for semiconductor device fabrication, such as epitaxial and gate dielectric growth processes, very important. Ge surface cleaning typically includes oxide removal, carbon removal, metallic surface contamination, and the like, and is very important for heterogeneous integration schemes, as well as Ge-containing surfaces, such as SiGe materials which have greater than twenty five percent (>25%) Ge at the surface.
One aspect of heterogeneous integration is epitaxial growth on Ge single crystal substrate. Providing a clean and well passivated surface, such as one passivated with GeO2, becomes important for meeting epitaxial growth requirements. If the surface cleaning is insufficient, impurity elements such as oxygen, carbon, and metal are left over on the surface, and can lead to stacking faults or point defects, leading to poor electrical device performance. In the past, researchers have used several methods or processes for the preparation of Ge and Ge-containing surfaces with various levels of success. One of these methods is a cyclic wet cleaning method which typically produces rough surfaces having high carbon levels leading to growth-related nucleation defects.
Others have used UV-ozone processes to clean carbon from the surface and produce a GeO2 passivation layer. The UV-ozone processes, however, do not address the removal of surface metallic contaminants. In addition, the UV-ozone process is lengthy and while it creates a smooth surface void of carbon, it produces a lower density oxide consistent with a higher GeOx/GeO2 ratio, where O<x<2. Furthermore, wafer fab tools built to handle large batch sizes using this UV-ozone process are not readily available. Still further, chemical surface termination processes have also been utilized to prepare Ge based surfaces, yet have proved difficult to produce a stable passivated surface.
Therefore, a need exists for a method of preparing a Ge or Ge-containing semiconductor substrate surface for subsequent semiconductor device fabrication, such as epitaxial growth or gate dielectric growth.